Month: November 2018

It might have been easy in recent years for incumbents, mass market investors and generally the mainstream to dismiss cryptocurrency for several reasons. It’s volatile. It exists virtually. It’s all about anonymity. It’s not regulated. It cuts out the middleman. It was created by a community of developers. For years, the virtual currency seemed more an underground fad than a true and legit financial resource. But that finally appears to be changing.

Crypto Gets Institutionalized

With the recent announcement from Goldman Sachs that they’ve teamed with billionaire Michael Novogratz to invest in BitGo, a startup that aims to help institutional investors securely store their cryptocurrency, crypto may no longer be the red-headed step child of finance. Between them, Goldman and Galaxy Digital Ventures are investing about $16 million in BitGo. And while this amount is a drop in the bucket for Goldman and Novogratz, it certainly indicates the incumbents taking crypto seriously and realizing their customers are looking for the option to not only invest but have a safe place to keep these investments.

Beyond security, Fidelity is taking it a step further, rolling out their own standalone company, Fidelity Digital Asset Services (FDAS). The world’s 5th-largest asset manager has established FDAS for their clients, hedge funds, and FIs to trade and store cryptocurrency. With $7.2 trillion in assets under management, 27 million customers and 13,000+ institutional clients, Fidelity might seem an unlikely candidate to hop on the crypto bandwagon, but they do spend $2.5 billion per year on technology, partially through incubators that house its artificial intelligence and blockchain projects.